


Nesting

by GraceEliz



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Fluff, It's all very soft and cute, Nesting, Sentient Wayne Manor, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 14:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: The world is thus:Lares, Betas and Dicios, the biological dynamics as they were called.And the Sirens, alphas and omegas, the few with the power to take you over with their voices.Cass knows she is omega. She isn't sure what her biological presentation is, but her Dad seems to be working it out.





	Nesting

**Author's Note:**

> It's late but it's here. I like this idea, so feel free to use it as long as you link me in.

_Lare: the protection instinct is strongest in Lares. Most soldiers and other protection jobs are Lares. If the instinct is unfulfilled, it leads to outbursts of uncontrolled rage._  
Beta: nothing considered extra-human.  
Dicio: have very strong brooding impulses. Three times a year – every four months – the instinct leads to a heat if the Dicio has no offspring or dependents. Can be very painful, due to the stress related ulcers and other illnesses.  
Siren alpha: their Song talent is more comparable to a bludgeon. They can command and coerce people very easily, but their attacks are easier to notice. Not necessarily break, but the victim knows they’re being Sung to.  
Siren omega: Song talents are much more surgical. An omegas Song is very much a slow infiltration into the victim’s mind, twisting their thoughts to the omegas purposes. These attacks are much more difficult but very difficult to notice.  
Non-Siren: has no Singing ability. Sirens are rare in almost every part of the world. 

The first sign that one of his Dicio children is approaching a heat is the sudden absence of all his favourite soft blankets, the ones he uses to weigh himself down for sleep. Second signs are more varied: Dick usually started hoarding loaves of bread; Jason went lethargic; Tim turned into a koala. Steph and Duke didn’t have heats, some of the lucky few who didn’t go through hell three times a year – Bruce would admit it was a relief to have a couple of fellow betas in the home. It often surprised people that Alfred with his quiet and contained personality had presented as one of the very few lares; it had terrified Bruce as a child to hear his beloved butler, whom he considered to be his third parent, scream in wordless formless fury at nothing. Dr Lesley had explained it as an ancient urge to protect the family unit, an urge which in the modern day was often left unfulfilled. As a house servant Alfred suffered, but as Bruce’s prime caretaker these outbursts subsided. He tried not to think about the fact Damian appeared to be presenting as a Lare. 

For some reason, both Bruce’s blankets and the library rug were missing. Alfred’s collection of soft scarves was similarly absent. As yet no evidence had been seen towards the cause of these disappearances, but Bruce was starting to develop a suspicion that he’d miscounted the weeks on the family calendar. This had all the signs of an approaching Dicio heat. The question was, whose heat was it? Tim had just come out of his this week, so it definitely couldn’t be him. Theoretically it could be Jason but he’d developed a scent recently and Bruce hadn’t detected any traces of it. 

Still. Hoarding soft things was by many omegas considered a just about reasonable substitute for a child to brood over.

Who hadn’t he thought about? Steph, Duke and himself were beta, Alfred and possibly Damian were Lares, Dick, Jason and Tim had all had their heats or weren’t due anytime soon. That left Cass.

Ah.

Cass. 

He really, really hoped he was wrong. Dammit. 

Wasn’t it enough she was a Siren? Being a Siren wasn’t a gift. It meant always watching your words, your tone, the reactions of those listening to you. It was so easy for Bruce to talk his way into a person’s head and make them see things how he wanted them too. He’d taken his natural ability and honed it and crafted it into a tool, a surgical scalpel of pinpoint precision. Cass, well, she had it too, like him, but she didn’t know how to use it. They were dealing with it as it came up, but he really didn’t want to deal with Cass brooding at the same time as testing the limit of her voice. Damn. 

Jason had been a lot easier to handle. Alpha Sirens were more like a weighted net. Most of the time, they pushed their voices at their target until they got what they wanted. Where Bruce was a surgeon, Jason was a man with a mace waiting outside your back door. Their clashes had been dramatic and not at all fun, but he always saw Jason coming, and that had made resisting the command to fetch him someone to brood over far easier to block out. 

It was a shame he’d used his voice for bad things. He’d have been a real help with Cass. 

Cass knows how the world is. There are those who speak and their voices have power even over the deaf and mute. These people have two types: alpha, because they can take control, and omega, because they convince and cajole and you don’t know you’re being Charmed until it’s far too late. Dad is omega. He has the sneak-speech which is like having shadows in people. Dad uses his shadow to stop bad things from happening, if you looked at it simply. She knows full well that Society with a capital S does not approve, she knows her father only cares as far as it affects them, she knows Jason is considered by all to be a gentleman – a good man – even though she doesn’t like him because he broke the trust and used his strength-speech to kill and hurt people. This is the outline of her world. It is enough.

Dad, he is the best sneak-shadow-speaker. She is one too, but she struggles with words. Last week, she signed up to singing lessons with a lady who told her she wouldn’t need words, only sounds. It sounded pretty great, especially when she told her that the voice is in itself a weapon. You can sing a man into his grave, the teacher had said. Cass wasn’t entirely sure what she thought of that. That wasn’t what she’d use her voice for.

Cass knows the three bloods, too: Lare, Beta and Dicio. Lares are the protectors of the home, Betas are lucky and don’t have heats or rages, and Dicios are broody and prefer to raise children over anything else.  
This last few days had been strange for her. She’d cooed – her, the shadow of the night, terror of Gotham cooing at a little girl she’d retrieved from an abusive mother. Letting the girl go from her grasp had upset her, she had no idea why, and she’d only calmed down when Dad tucked her into bed and read to her. She didn’t know all the words but she liked to listen. Usually. She hadn’t even been soothed by Dad’s rumbling. And now, here she is, tucking her favourite rug from the library under Dad’s bed.

First the rug, then Dad’s blankets, then the soft scarves Alfred hoarded in the coat cupboard. Cass lay on the floor squinting at her new den, trying to decide what was missing. Cushions? Yeah, why not. She pulled two of her favourites down off the bed, but Tim had some really great cushions in his room. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly wanted to make a den, but she was having fun, and felt less icky than before, and nobody would be able to stop her except Dad and Jason. She was very certain there were no other Sirens in the family. Damian wasn’t a Siren, thank god. 

Bruce prowled his house. That’s what Alfred had always called his repetitive rounds of the main rooms, the boundary, and then the less used rooms of the Manor. They both knew that strictly speaking, it was entirely unnecessary, as Alfred did the rounds several times a day and Bruce had a special connection to the semi-sentient Manor. He wouldn’t call his home alive – it wasn’t by any stretch of the word – but he could tap in to the foundations of the building, see where his children were, see structural damage and mould and places where accidents had been hidden from him. It had always been this way. Learning the Siren Songs had only increased the connection between him and his family home, to the point where he could lock doors and call his children from anywhere in the grounds. 

Cass, somehow, was hiding from him.

It seemed she would be that sort of a Dicio.  
None of the other children were nesters, so Bruce had no idea what to expect. Ma Kent was a nester, but would she mind him calling? Would Cass? Probably neither of them would given how close they were. Cass had never expressed a wish for a mother, but she really did like to consider Ma Kent her Grandmother. If they encountered problems, he’d call. Hopefully Damian was still small enough to appease her instincts. If not, well he’d think of something that wouldn’t involve getting another baby. Alfred would throw him out. Not that Bruce had a habit of picking up more children, or empty nest syndrome or anything. The kids were making up evidence.

Cass looked up from half under the bed. Dad had come in, and leant on the doorframe to watch her finish tugging the den around. She grinned. She signed for him to come over and see what she’d built. It would be a good place to guard a baby.

“Looks cozy, Cass. Have you left me any blankets?”

She shook her head.

“Want anything?”

Cass considered. Damian wasn’t home yet, but she thought the dogs might come snuggle.

“Titus.”

Bruce smiled. “I’ll send Damian up as soon as he gets home,” he promised.

“Love you.”

“I love you too, Princess Cass.”


End file.
